Harper Collins, Sydney 2005  

Wild Lavender is a big book – which is great as you really get the chance to know the characters and feel involved in their lives. It covers nearly twenty years of the life of a French woman Simone Fleurier.

Her life covers living on a quiet farm and in cities, the show business world and Nazi-controlled France, so there is a lot of variety in the story.

Simone’s life isn’t a fairy tale, although she has a number of successes, and terrible things do happen to her starting with the death of her beloved father and ending with the loss of friends during the war.

Alexandra weaves her story amongst the real event and people of France so that I almost believed Simone was a real person rather than a fictional character.

It isn’t a story to be categorised – there is a rags to riches element, but it is also a war story; there are three love stories as well as bitterness and jealously causing problems.

Bit it is a story to recommend – I really enjoyed reading Wild Lavender and look forward to reading Alexandra’s work again.

Filed under: Book reviews